Guadalupe Nettel

What I search for, always, is simplicity. This is very important to me: I want my language to be as transparent as possible, without affectations. When I reread, I correct. I want the text to be euphonic, the words can’t screech, there must be no repetitions, sonorities. I am obsessive”.

Guadalupe Nettel is the author of the novels El huésped (2006), El cuerpo en que nací (2011), Después del invierno (2014), which earned the Herralde Award, and La hija única (2020), all published in the Spanish language by Anagrama. She is also the author of the short story collections Pétalos y otras historias incómodas (Anagrama, 2008) and El matrimonio de los peces rojos (Páginas de Espuma, 2013), among others. Presently she is the editorial director of Revista de la Universidad de México, of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

For her work, which has been translated into over seventeen languages, she was included in the Bogotá 39 group of Latin America’s most promising young writers, and she has received the Ribera del Duero Award for short fiction (Spain, 2013) and the Anna Seghers Prize (Germany, 2009), among other honors and recognitions.

Nettel holds a PhD in Language Sciences from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in France, and an undergraduate degree in Spanish Language and Literature from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She has contributed articles to publications such as El País; the supplement Confabulario of the newspaper El Universal, Letras Libres, Gatopardo and The New York Times en Español.